


singing to the stranger, begging for his kiss

by Jade_Masquerade



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Costume Ball, Dark!Jon, F/M, Halloween event, Harvest Feast, Masquerade Ball, direwolves, switched identities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:35:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 9,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27202565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jade_Masquerade/pseuds/Jade_Masquerade
Summary: Jon wakes from death with a clear purpose: to find her, even if Sansa doesn't seem to want to be found.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Comments: 187
Kudos: 231





	1. Wargs and In the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Did I write yet another Jon takes Sansa from the Vale fic? Yep... ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ 
> 
> Written for the Jonsa Halloween Event 2020

The darkness in the shadow of the Eyrie called out to him as it did often these days. 

Once Jon would have been afraid of what he could not see, but now that he had viewed the world through Ghost’s eyes, now that he could still sense a lingering taste of danger and a smell of fear, now that he had been to the other side, he knew there was nothing to be frightened of there among the veils of night. 

No one would notice him here; no one would cast suspicion over him and the all-blacks he wore, nor remark upon the way he remained concealed beneath his hood. He could have probably opened his shirt to reveal the slashes on his chest, the deep wounds that had scarred over, cursed wounds that never should have had a chance to heal, and not a soul would have taken a second glance. 

No, he blended right in with those making the ascent to the Gates of the Moon on this crisp autumn evening for the Vale’s harvest feast, on their way to celebrate the bounty before the bitter cold of winter set in. Instead of their usual finery, this time they dressed in costumes and masks, though most of their guises were no less elaborate than their usual displays of tunics emblazoned with house sigils and armor polished to a gleam.

Jon waited in the dark as they passed, edging along the line of trees, by the towering pines and spruce that grew up out of the steep rockface, black on black, night against night. Free to stare, his gaze flit over each of them in turn: a woman feathered as though she wore an entire murder of crows, a man dressed as a stag that seemed to be the very one which had felled King Robert, someone he suspected was supposed to be one of the children of the forest, and an inordinate number of falcons and other beaked creatures. He could feel their emanating joy, how it seemed to hang in the air, palpable, could smell their thrill and taste the anticipation. 

He could still feel other things, too, sometimes—the cold of steel pressing between his ribs, of ice at his back, slowly slinking through his veins, and a vast emptiness, and what came after, the crunch of snow beneath his paws, the scent of easy prey lurking in the woods, the way his hackles seem to rise when someone neared too close. Even with the sound of merriment peaking his ears and the feel of so many warm bodies near, if he closed his eyes now he could see the murky woods surrounding Ghost, smell the peat of the forest floor, hear the rustle of mice and rabbits burying beneath the brush, scurrying away at the scent of the beast, their natural enemy. 

Sometimes he thought of how simple it would be to slip away, to run unfettered, unburdened as Ghost, to hunt and feed and mate without a worry, but that wasn’t why he was brought back, he knew. He conjured up the image of her again, a vision as clear as day, as sharp as the edge of a sword, more a memory than a dream, hair like burnt embers, black smothering the red, a cloak of grey, and eyes the color of a summer sky that haunted him and innervated him all at once. 

She was here. He knew that much, despite his senses dull compared to Ghost’s. Not close, but here, and that was enough. 

The sound of their chatter drowned out the rest of what he could feel. _How many courses would be served, and how many would reach those below the salt? Would little Lord Robert be well enough to lead them in the dancing, or would handsome Ser Hardyng take his place? What time into the night would the feasting and revelry last, or would the dawn come first?_

It was no more than meaningless drivel, the kinds of trivial thoughts to occupy shallow minds, untarnished by the clutches of death and ignorant to their own fragile mortality, like a flock of sheep unaware of the wolf amongst them. 

But he was not the predator here, not the true danger. That threat awaited them inside, draped in the trappings of opulence and wealth, offering benevolence and protection in exchange for fealty and obedience. After he had felt that pull of freedom, and now that he knew the comforts of this world were just that, Jon would never again submit, never bow to such authority. 

The crowd began to thin at last, and he pulled up the strip of black over his eyes. It would do little to hide the truth if someone looked him in the face, but at least it covered the scrapes Orell’s eagle had given him long ago. He smiled at the guards standing outside the castle as he entered through the gates, the action feeling wooden and unnatural, more like a snarl than a smirk, not that he thought his resurrection had made much of a difference there. 

The hall seemed to glow from within, a magical place filled with the glow of candles and the tinkling of laughter. He wove through it as out of place as he existed in the rest of the world, a bastard relegated to the back of a feast once more, the son of a lord among thieves and rapers, once dead among the always living. Hood up, mask on, he shifted as he stalked through hordes already drinking ale and toasting wine, feeling Longclaw’s weight concealed beneath the cloak on his back, the sword a stanchion along his spine.

Here he would be another farmer, a future soldier, a hedge knight coming to enjoy the hospitality of the lords of the Vale for a night. He would be whatever it took until he got close to her, he would jest and dance and imbibe along with all the rest, but he planned to leave with far more than a full belly and the sharing of a few pleasantries. 

He would be taking Sansa Stark, and together they would take back their home.


	2. Colors

The hall was awash with color, and from her vantage point at the back, Sansa could see it all. 

The flicker of flames from the candles fashioned by House Waxley illuminated on the stone walls, autumn scents of rich nutmeg and cinnamon-roasted apple and mulled spice floating on the air. Pumpkins, the largest of all those grown in Westeros she’d heard, adorned the tables, flanked by squashes and gourds for the smallfolk to take home after they’d done their decorative duties. Strings of sewn leaves that matched the colors of those outside stretched from sconce to sconce, 

And in between, the crowds themselves were a vibrant departure from the plain dark cloaks and furs of grey and black. Whereas usually house sigils provided the only bits of color in a sea of monotony, now there was nary a sigil in sight, unless one counted Ser Hubert Hersy wearing outrageously oversized white wings and holding a chalice in hand or Ser Uther Shett dressed as a seagull. 

The costumes of many women were even more elaborate. The likenesses of Shiera Seastar, Princess Nymeria, and Sharra the Witch Queen filled the hall, interspersed among horned unicorns and mermaids and wood nymphs. Girls of all ages wore the floating fabrics of Lady Alyssa Arryn, tears of shimmering blue and silver painting their cheeks, even while they were all smiles. Sansa would have once envied them their extravagant appearances, spending years coveting the bright yellow and blue of one of the branches of House Flint and the pretty violet lilies of House Fenn, bored by the dull white and grey of House Stark. 

She smoothed over the dress she wore now, all dyed grey, a simple bodice that fit her snuggly and a skirt of wool flaring outward from the waist. Alayne would have looked down at such a drab shade, and truth be told, Sansa would have too, but that was the color of freedom now, of anonymity. With her darkened hair and her unadorned silver mask, she thought even she herself would be hard pressed to recognize herself in such a guise. 

The most flamboyant costumes of those up on the dais caught her eye—huge hoop skirts, towering hats, and embellished cloaks made of velvet and satin and exotic furs. Across the hall, seated among them, Alyssa Stone dazzled in Alayne’s silk dress of mockingbird gold and her ornate mask imported from Braavos. They looked similar enough, and in the darkness with the ale flowing freely, Sansa knew anyone would be hard pressed to tell the difference, yet she still worried the deception would be discovered. 

“I would _die_ to be a lord’s daughter, even just for a night,” Alyssa sighed weeks ago as they sat sewing the garlands of leaves after Sweetrobin’s host of Winged Knights had exited the room with the little lord, each taking a bow before Alayne as they did so. 

“Littlefinger isn’t a lord here, not truly,” Sansa had said, sharper than she should have. “He’s only regent for Sweerobin.” 

“Close enough!” Alyssa said. The handmaid snatched Alayne’s mask from her wardrobe, which Littlefinger had gifted her with earlier that morning, and held it up to her face. “It was your suggestion for the feast to be a masquerade, after all…” 

It had not taken much more convincing than that, the mere inkling of an idea, and so when they’d dressed earlier this evening, Sansa had let down her hair in simple curls and Alyssa pinned hers up in elaborate twists anchored by a golden comb inset with glittering black diamonds, and when they’d emerged from her chambers, no one had been the wiser. 

Once Sansa had dreamed of harvest feasts and masked balls, and while she still did revel in the magic of it all, in those dreams she had danced, she had fluttered her lashes at the knights who drew here interest, and she had shared sweet kisses with them. She had never imagined she would instead be trapped beneath the watchful eye of a man who called her daughter yet wanted her for himself or be pestered by an intended suitor who saw her as merely a conquest, with whom there would be no love, only desire until his interest waned. In those dreams, she had been among her true family, and in the comforts of her home, and she had always been Sansa, never Alayne. 

And so for tonight she decided to call herself Jeyne, a common enough name not likely to arouse any suspicions, the name of her closest friend from Winterfell whose memory still pulled at her heart. Sansa vowed she would find her someday, once she escaped this place. Jeyne had shared those same dreams with her, and Sansa remembered the faces she’d pull whenever her friend sighed over Robb, how they had tittered together over Lord Beric Dondarrion, and how Jeyne had once squealed when Sansa admitted she wondered how Ser Waymar Royce most liked to be kissed, earning a sharp glare from Septa Mordane. 

Now, though, those intentions seemed positively innocent. Sansa would be lying if she said she had not thought of far more than gentle kisses nowadays and if she denied being curious about the things Myranda spoke of. She craved the brief, easy whirlwinds of romance the older girl and her handmaids shared in hushed whispers, to merely experience what exhilarations of youth had been stolen from her when they took her father’s head and Cersei’s demands turned her captive. She wanted a single night where she did not have to play this game, a moment where she felt liberated, no longer the little bird kept in a cage. She knew it was silly, maybe stupid even, but she could not help but hope for a kiss and perhaps more with a man she found dashing, a man who cared little or not at all if she bore a bastard name, a man who wouldn’t laugh at her blushing the way Harry sometimes did when she pushed away his insistent hands or turned her cheek to him. 

The feast cleared quickly despite the many rounds, and soon the musicians struck up “Fair Maids of Summer” in celebration of the true end of the season. Sansa watched a couple dressed as Jonquil and Florian take the floor, another garbed as Lady Shella and her Rainbow Knight soon following. Alyssa danced with Ser Harrold, and the fact that it seemed he couldn’t tell the difference only confirmed what a dolt he truly was. They would giggle about this later, Sansa knew; Alyssa had become a true friend in the time they spent together, as true a friend as Alayne could have anyway. 

Sansa herself set her sights on the handsome knights and men-at-arms seated at the long tables on the floor and below the salt. Some she recognized from the tournament where Sweetrobin had crowned his Winged Knights, but Harry had filled her sights then, and most of them wouldn’t have dared to look askance at the daughter of Lord Baelish or cross Ser Harrold by intruding on his betrothed. She was no longer confined though; now she was free to choose, and she eagerly drank them in. 

The seven sons of House Sunderland all equally striking, even dressed as the seven drunken oarsmen. She admired Ser Cadwyn Egen and his riot of blonde curls, Ser Osbert Woodhull and his sweet smile, and how Ser Robbett Ruthermont so tall she would have had to crane her neck to glimpse his face if he held her in his arms. And then there were some things about them she liked for no reason at all it seemed: the way Ser Symon Crayne wore the collar of his shirt open to expose his chest, how Ser Landon Hunter looked exceptionally good in his tight huntsman breeches, what it would sound like for Jace Stone, a bastard son from one of the Templeton branches, to whisper in her ear with his deep voice. 

She avoided Ser Morgarth and Ser Byron as she made her rounds. Ser Byron was good looking enough, but Sansa didn’t trust him more than her arm could reach, and the risk of recognition there would be too great anyhow. There were plenty of others, who came from lands afar and would return there after this night, and it did not take long until she was swept into the throng by Walder Upcliff. 

He wore a high-necked cloak and a white mask, and she could smell ale already on his breath. She tried to engage him in cordial conversation, but Walder seemed far more interested in glancing down her dress than meeting her eye. With his leering smile and the way his hands dug into her hips to hold her closer than she would have liked, Sansa was grateful when the song changed, and he evidently lost interest in the slow, mournful rhythm of “Fallen Leaves.” 

She participated in dancing the steps of the next few songs, a reel and a quick number where she spun from one partner to another, laughing breathlessly. 

“Ser Andar,” she said, looking up at the knight with whom she’d had the fortune to finish the previous song. Ser Andar was every bit the picture of gallantry and comeliness, with his wavy golden hair, broad chest, and hands that spanned her waist. “It’s so lovely to see you this evening.” 

He frowned. “Beg pardon, have we met?” 

“Oh, I’m Lady Elesham’s handmaid. Jeyne,” she said, catching herself. “I admired your performance in the tournament of the Winged Knights. It’s a shame Lord Arryn did not choose you for his guard. I can think of no one more deserving.” 

He did smile at that. No matter how stoic he was, it seemed he enjoyed flattery as much as anyone else. 

“You’re so strong,” she said, running her hands along the muscles in his arms. 

“It’s only sword work,” he said. “It requires none of the great effort needed to tend your lady, I imagine.”

She giggled, reaching up to touch her hair. She found herself not minding so much if Ser Andar found it fit to study the bosom of her dress, and she found herself very much wantonly wishing to draw his attention to the curves of her body there. 

His attention seemed elsewhere though, either that or he possessed a remarkable streak of honor that no other man could manage to compete with, for he steadfastedly maintained his gaze on some point over her shoulder. 

“Excuse me,” he said as the last chords of “The Bear and the Maiden Fair” faded, and he disappeared in the direction of one of Sweetrobin’s Winged Knights. 

It was no matter, though. Sansa turned, and she whirled right into the arms of another.


	3. Tales and the Stranger

The floor cleared a path as Jon stepped onto it, the crowd staying away the way they seemed to do the same from the statue of the Stranger in the sept. He wondered if they thought this sacrilege, if they took offense that he dared to wear the face of one of their gods. 

It made no difference to him if they did; they weren’t real anyhow, neither the old gods or the new, nor the fire god the red witch claimed brought him back. They could pray all they wanted, light all the candles they wished, spend as much time on their knees as they saw fit, and there would still be nothing waiting there for them on the other side. 

He remembered Sansa following Lady Catelyn to the sept in the morning as a girl, and how come afternoon, she would pay respects to the weeping weirwood in the godswood of Winterfell. He wondered if she still prayed, and what that had done for her. Did she beg to know what she had done to deserve this kind of fate? Did she ask them an escape from this place? Or had she turned her back on them, her words having fallen on deaf ears? 

He could see men watching her, likely whispering some words of their own. It did not matter that she had dressed herself to appear as some baseborn girl, nor did it matter that they were sworn knights who had vowed to uphold honor. He could sense their intentions, their desire, and it was not at all honorable. 

He had stood by and watched as she danced with a sandy haired man who had since disappeared from sight. That one seemed safe enough though, at least better than the first man she’d entertained. He growled at the memory of how he had handled Sansa like a possession, and one he was none too fond of at that. He hoped for that man’s own sake that he had passed out in an alcove somewhere by now, lest he cross Jon’s path. 

Another began approaching Sansa in the brief absence of the other knight, this one already staggering, grinning back at his friends as he mimed obscene gestures, and Jon increased his haste, pushing his way through the surge of bodies, even between couples, and shoving a drunkard in the apt outfit of a court fool out of the way. 

It overwhelmed him, being surrounded by so many people after such a period of solitude. He could feel their anger directed at him as he pressed his way between them, which quickly ebbed away with a change of song and another round of ale, he could smell sweat through the stifling aroma of the candles, almost taste their joy and exhilaration. It only magnified as he neared her, a rush of sound and scent, and he felt the air heavy yet taut with tension, as though it would send a jolt through him if he could reached out and touched it, the way the tip of a lightning bolt ignited dry ground. 

And then Sansa swung into his arms, and the rest faded to a mere murmur. 

“Good evening, kind Ser,” she greeted with a smile that would have made the soberest of men weak-kneed, and she reached up to kiss both his cheeks. Apparently she wished to make her message clear that had been lost on that tall blond oaf, but somehow the action made her own tinge red instead.

Even with her mask, her plain dress, and her dulled hair, he could tell Sansa was pretty; she always had been, and yet he had not quite expected for her to be of near a height with him, or the way her hair had been dyed as dark as his cloak, but still possessed a shimmer, or for her body to have the curves of a woman that fit too neatly in his hands. 

“I’m no Ser,” he said. 

“Me neither,” she giggled. 

That sparked something within him that he’d thought long dead, and he grinned in reply. 

“Let me guess,” she said. “Another Balerion?” 

“The Stranger,” he said, and felt a thrill at being anything but to her. 

She showed no fear at his words, no recoil at the unmentionable name, but gave another laugh instead. “How clever of you.” 

“And you, lady?” 

The song changed, and still she remained in his arms. “I’m no lady,” she said. “Only Jeyne. Call me Jeyne.” 

“I don’t think I will,” he said, and then he dredged up her name from where it had been seated from long ago in his memory, where it had burned deep inside of him since he’d come back, driving his singular mission in defiance of death. “Sansa.” 

Her eyes widened at that and she gasped, pausing mid-dance so the couple behind her bumped into her, and Jon gathered her into his arms again. A moment passed, and then another, and then her face smoothed again, beautiful, inscrutable, impermeable, and the dance continued none the different. 

“Jon?” she said, and the rush of her breath was like fire in his veins. Even so, he could understand her suspicion, and he reached deep into the past for a tale from another life. 

“Do you remember once when Old Nan told us of Brandon the Breaker?” He held her closer, his whisper a hush in her ear. The words felt wooden at first, but once he began, they seemed to flow freely, well worn by repetition. “It started with a seemingly endless winter. Winterfell sat barricaded by snows and plagued by rumors of giants and of dead men come down from the Wall—that was Bran’s favorite part, if I recall. With the future of House Stark and all of Westeros in doubt, men and free folk fought alongside one another, allied in a way never seen to then or since. And at the end she always repeated…” 

“The pack survives,” she finished. Tears pricked her eyes, and he knew she knew. “I never thought I’d see you again.” 

He couldn’t tell her he knew he would—that he had seen so on the other side, that her image had turned him away from death, that even sleep eluded him, for he always awoke with a start when he saw her in his dreams not clouded with the taste of blood and the howls of wolves. He kissed her forehead instead, and he knew what those around them would think. Even from this far, he could sense the jealousy in some of the men watching from the edges of the floor, feel the eyes following them, and he felt no shame anymore at that nor the pleasure he took in it. 

“Who taught you to dance?” she asked. “Did you learn in the Night’s Watch?” 

He laughed, thinking of Ygritte and the free folk beyond the Wall a lifetime ago. Things were so much clearer this time around. “Something like that.” 

She pulled away slightly to meet his gaze. “How did you know?” 

There were many things he could have told her: how her wolf blood called to him, how the image of her had possessed him, how he felt as though he’d been placed upon a path and somehow it led to her. He could feel her heart flutter and her breath quicken as they drew closer, and his blood heated in response, growing hotter as he felt her eyes glance over him, the bob of his throat, his arms, his chest, and lower still. 

“I had a feeling,” he said, and she smiled again as though she thought he was being glib. 

The song slowed, and she began to hum along to the melody, and soon she started to sing the words of the song: “ _I loved a maid as red as autumn, with sunset in her hair…_ ”

Another memory from long ago struck him, one of Sansa in Winterfell, brushing out Lady’s coat. Her voice was a balm, soothing the turmoil within in him, sating the wolf for a moment. The peace felt fragile but it did not dissolve the longer she sang on, and a calm he hadn’t felt since before daggers in the dark, perhaps even before his brothers had elected him lord commander, or before he’d been tasked to kill the boy within washed over him and settled in his bones.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics from "Seasons of My Love" in ASOIAF


	4. Quotes and Monsters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Photo edit made by the lovely [Sunbeamsandmoonrays!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunbeamsandmoonrays/works)

“Seasons of My Love” ebbed away, replaced by the far more upbeat “Fifty-Four Tuns.” Those on the floor formed two lines again and then looped into two circles that rotated opposite of each other, switching their direction each time the chorus came around again. Even though Sansa had looked forward all night to this particular song and the ribaldry and laughter it never failed to bring about, she clung tight to Jon.

There were a few other couples that did the same, unwilling to separate from their partners or share them with another for even a moment, though Sansa suspected some were also unaware of the change in pace given their deep state of infatuation with each other. The couple of Florian and Jonquil she saw earlier were now entwined with each other and sharing a series of sloppy kisses, while Shella had rucked up her skirts a bit to grind up against the solid leg of her Rainbow Knight, her mouth hung open as he palmed her breasts.

Sansa glanced away quickly once she realized what they were doing, blushing, even as the wanton part of her that had persuaded her to engage in this masquerade in the first place wondered how that would feel, if it would be as pleasurable as the few times she had permitted her hand to wander beneath her dressing gown or better. 

She knew what those lining the floor must think, that they were one of those similar pairs too enamored with each other to care about those around them or to give consideration to where they were. She was surprised when the thought of that thrilled her rather than disturbed her, that the prospect was one that she could contemplate at all. 

Sansa had thought of how sweet to see Jon once again, but this was more than that. This was heady, overwhelming in a strange, exhilarating kind of way. It all easily could have made her weak-kneed, but Jon’s steady hands held her up as they swayed, so warm she could feel them through the wool of her dress

She couldn’t help but think Jon had grown handsome in their time apart. He looked nothing like the golden princes she loved in her youth, but rather rugged, with a mystery to him, and an edge and a certain darkness. It didn’t frighten her though; instead there was a familiarity, a comfort with him, that she had lacked with so many of the others she had crossed paths with during her time as Alayne.

Truthfully, she understood this _feeling_ Jon had mentioned, as silly as it sounded. She had experienced it too, when he swept her into his arms, even before she’d known who he truly was. Many a time she had prayed to the gods, old and new, for a respite from this series of nightmares, for an escape, and when moons had gone by without so much of a sign, she had nearly lost the faith all together, but she found amusement in the irony now that Jon came dressed as the Stranger himself.

They danced more intimately than Sansa had with any of her previous partners that night, yet she felt no need to pull away. Before she had known, she’d suspected there might have been a glimmer of desire there on Jon’s part, but even then he tried nothing and took no liberties. Jon held her as tight as Walder Upcliff had, she felt his body strong and firm against hers, and his eyes darkened the way she’d noticed with several other men, but those reactions in Jon did not frighten her. Perhaps it was all simple male mechanics; she knew there were no women in the Night’s Watch, after all.

“You shouldn’t be here!” she hissed, suddenly panicked, glancing down at his Night’s Watch blacks. 

“Nor should you,” he said, his tone a low, gravelly rumble that that made her belly flutter. 

“I don’t have a choice. Cersei would have had my head, or the Boltons,” she said. “But Father always said deserters…” She couldn’t bring herself to say the rest, but she knew he had grown up hearing the same, even witnessing such justice. 

He reached up, unlaced the top of his tunic, and pulled down the collar. A couple of raised, healed over wounds marred his chest there—one along his sternum, one even deeper just to the right of that where it surely would have penetrated his heart—and she could feel more beneath his shirt as she drew her hand down his body. 

She gasped as she traced along them. She supposed anyone else would have called them ugly, but she knew scars meant strength, that they meant survival. “How did you…?”

“I didn’t.” He told her of his brothers’ betrayal, of Ghost, of the red witch. “So I thought that satisfied my vows.”

If he were anyone else, she might have thought it a jest, or perhaps a tale told with the intention to scare her, but she knew better than that of Jon.

“Do you think me a monster?”

_There are no heroes,_ she’d thought once. _In life, the monsters win._ The girl she’d been then had known nothing, having just witnessed the cruelties of life for the first time. Now, though, she knew better: that sometimes heroes did terrible things, and that sometimes those the world considered monsters were not always what they seemed. “No. Of course not. Does that make me a fool?”

“Not any more than I.”

Compared to those that surrounded them, countless Ser Artys Arryns, several Symeon Star-Eyes, and even a few Ser Aemon the Dragonknights, perhaps Jon looked to be a monster with his hood up and mask on, hair dark, eyes dark, but appearances could be deceiving. There were some who had dressed as monsters—Balerion the Black Dread, freakish chimeras, vicious hellhounds—but Sansa knew now that more often than not mere men, even those with the handsomest faces, could be far more dangerous than any creatures from the kinds of stories Old Nan used to tell.

“I’ve never known a monster to be so kind.”

He smiled at that, and she was struck again by how much he had changed and how little he resembled the brooding boy she remembered. “You don’t know all of what I’ve done.”

She shrugged. “We’ve all done what we need to survive. And do monsters not usually have skin icy to the touch, or mottled and scaled?”

“Old Nan’s stories always seemed to suggest so,” he said, the corners of his mouth pulling up again. 

“Yours is quite warm,” she said, feeling her cheeks heat.

Sansa glanced away, but she felt his gaze stay on her all the same. She wondered if she should say more, or if he would think her the monster instead if she admitted to finding him comely before she had recognized him, and even after, even now, she found herself rather taken by his looks. 

“Who are those men?”

Sansa scanned across the floor. Alyssa and Harry had disappeared, and she desperately hoped she would not be expected to play along that she’d lost her maidenhead to him or performed something else more perverse for him this night later on when she was compelled to take up the mantle of Alayne again. An unidentifiable man had his face buried in Myranda Royce’s bosom as she giggled. And then her eyes fell upon Ser Shadrich standing on the edges of his tip toes to whisper in the ear of Lothor Brune.

“Littlefinger’s men.” She turned away quickly, but evidently not fast enough, and she could feel the growl in Jon’s chest when he met their stare. A tremble went through her, and she was grateful for the support of Jon’s strong arms.

“We should leave,” he said.

“No, we can’t,” she said. “They’ll only know something is out of sorts and follow.”

“At least pull up the hood of your cloak,” he said, pressing his cheek right up against hers so his words would have no chance of being caught by another.

“My hair will make no matter if they can still see my face,” she said, and she wondered if Jon could feel the pounding of her heart, the fear slipping down her spine.

“Sansa…” He turned so her back faced them, but her skin still prickled with the familiar feeling of their eyes boring into her. If they had reason to suspect, if they decided to near, if they drew close enough to snatch her mask…

“Kiss me, please,” she pleaded. She wondered if he would think she’d lost her mind, wondered what it would take to convince him. “Just kiss me.”

He flicked his eyes over to where Petyr’s men stood again, and then, so quickly she didn’t even have time to close her eyes, he pressed his lips to hers.

She snapped them shut, if only to block out the world around them. She expected Jon to linger there for a few moments, still and tepid, just long enough for them to lose interest and get swept up in ale or other matters. But then he began to move, slowly at first, and then she discovered that Jon’s kisses were nothing like the ones she had been imagining, nothing like the ones she had experienced before, kisses that were stiff and perfunctory, cool and pepperminty.

No, these kisses were hot and hard and fast until they became deep and full of an intensity in which she could easily find herself carried away, and suddenly there was nothing strange about him and oddly enough nothing strange about this either. She was merely a lady kissing a man she loved, and she sank into this sense of familiarity, desire stirring inside of her, her body responding before she could think of what this meant. 

When they broke away and she looked up at last, Ser Shadrich and Ser Lothor had vanished, but the heat had not gone from Jon’s eyes.


	5. Clothes

A roar swept through the hall as “A Cask of Ale” began to play, and Jon tugged at her hand. They slipped out between raised arms, concealed by the crowd lifting their sloshing pitchers and goblets high to toast together and their raucous shouts of, “A cask of ale! A CASK OF ALE!” 

Outside seemed positively silent in comparison. The moon was bright, and its fullness reflected off the surrounding moat, which shimmered with the glimmer of the torches on the walls. The forest appeared to wink with the flicker of the flames in the lanterns laid out to light the pathway through the darkness. _Like fairy lights,_ Sansa thought. To her, it should have been a familiar sight by now after months here, but tonight it looked… magical.

The cool air struck her as sharp and sobering, but even it failed to temper the heat of something that had woken inside of her which she had thought long extinguished. It flared again as they walked across the clearing outside the entrance of the hall. She could hear the giggle of a girl from the bushes beyond the moat, and she saw a couple entwined with each other against the wall of the castle itself. 

“I’m sorry, Jon,” she whispered, wondering if he had been stunned into a silence by her earlier forward behavior. “I know you weren’t expecting… I shouldn’t have…” 

“We all do what we need to survive,” he echoed her words from earlier. 

This felt like more than survival, though—she felt _alive,_ vividly, vibrantly alive, and she wondered if this was how Jon felt when life filled his lungs again, when he opened his eyes as Ghost’s and then his own. 

A pack of revelers returning to the feast passed, singing their own very obscene version of “The Maids That Bloom in Spring,” and Jon pulled her aside out of the way and into the shadows alongside the slight cover of a low stone wall.

“Oh no,” Sansa breathed. 

She had turned just at the wrong moment to see Ser Shadrich, this time accompanied by Ser Morgarth and Ser Byron, emerge from the hall, and apparently thinking little of those they saw outside engaged in various states of amorous activities, they stalked off to follow along the path to the forest. 

“Don’t look,” Jon muttered as they neared where they stood, his hands stiffening on her waist and bringing her to face him again. Sansa buried her face in his neck instead and breathed him in, a sense of comfort and familiarity she couldn’t name or place, could only _feel,_ settled over her once more to assuage her worries. 

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you hoped to kiss me again,” she teased when she straightened, following it up with a laugh at her own lame joke for extra measure. 

Jon didn’t laugh, though. He cupped her cheeks and drew her close as Littlefinger’s men passed by unawares, peering into the night, and disappeared into the forest. 

“Is that what you want?” 

They already had once, so what was another? And if she was already pretending to be someone else for the night, then what was the harm? It seemed unreal enough that he was really here; what if this truly was a dream? 

“Yes,” she whispered, and Jon wasted not a moment more in granting her wish. 

Pressed up against him, she could feel his heart did beat, could feel his ribs expand with breath, and strangely enough, they seemed to pound and quicken just like hers, too. His hands burned through the wool of her dress, his warmth enveloping her as she melted into him in a way that would have been entirely improper to demonstrate in the feast hall. Sansa supposed it was still improper anyhow, but out here she liked to think no one was looking, that no one would see them surrounded by the shadows. 

Jon shifted, his hands slipping downward to grasp her behind, and she bumped up against something and gasped. The contact more surprised rather than frightened her though, so slowly, tentatively, she tilted her hips again and this time Jon groaned as she rubbed against him. 

He sank to sit on the stone wall and urged her between his legs. She was a bit taller than him this way, and unused to kissing at such an angle, she reached down to twist her fingers through Jon’s hair and clutched his shoulders to balance, until he pulled her further down into his lap. 

Sansa sat astride him, one knee bent so it rested beside him on the roughhewn stone. The position would have been uncomfortable if not for the way he seemed to brush up against her center so perfectly like this… right _there,_ where she felt herself hot and wet for him, and she sighed as she slid along his hard length again, something divine sparking inside of her and spurring her on. She could feel his heat despite the clothes between them, and it fanned the flames in her as he dropped kisses along her jaw, down her neck, and across her chest. 

The clothes she had so meticulously chosen for tonight now served as an infuriating barrier between them. Her skirts complicated matters a bit, tangling around her legs, and she wished she could have shucked them off, this cloak along with them, and maybe everything else until she was perhaps right down to her shift, or just in her smallclothes and stockings. 

Her dress clung too tight, the bodice digging into her waist, her breasts threatening to spill over the top of it, Jon palming them through the fabric. Moving lower, Jon gathered her skirts in his fists and held them out of the way. His hands gripping her hips, he canted his own ever so slightly, but the small action still felt so, so good she moaned. 

Her breathing sounded ragged to her own ears, embarrassingly so, but she supposed there was nothing left to be ashamed of with the way she writhed wantonly against him. 

She bit her lip, hoping to stifle the other unladylike noises that threatened to spill free. “Jon, I…” 

“Don’t stop,” he commanded, his voice rough, sounding close to something of his own. 

It was frustrating and exhilarating all at once, his length and thickness certainly an improvement over her own thin fingers, and she wriggled in his lap, trying to get the pressure just right. That was difficult to do when every which way felt nearly as good as the last, pleasure winding through her until it crested and snapped, leaving her boneless and sated as her hips started to slow. 

And then a wolf began to howl somewhere in the forest, a loud, low, mournful sound, and the screams and shouts that followed drowned out her last gasp as she leapt away from Jon, the magical feeling ebbing away almost as quickly as it had begun.


	6. Fear

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit late to finish this up for the Halloween event, but I truly wish Halloween season could last all year, so I guess this is just an extension of that!

Sansa disentangled herself from his lap, scrambling to her feet again, and despite the urgency that should have driven him to do the same, Jon couldn’t help but feel bereft. 

It had been a mistake to let down his guard for those brief moments. Now, his mind was clouded with the sounds of Sansa’s sighs, and he could smell the scent of her desire on him still. No matter what other images greeted him that night, it would be a long time before he would be able to push the one of Sansa in his lap, her head thrown back, her breasts at eye level and her back arched, out of his mind. 

Jon stood at last. He would deal with the discomfort in his breeches later, hopefully far from here. He wondered if she would let him hold her, if she would let him touch her again, taste her sweetness. Whatever death had twisted him into, Sansa had soothed and inflamed him all at once. 

The fleeting magic of the moment began to dissipate and something else, something sharp and raw, settled in its place. Fear pervaded his senses, cutting through the air, scorching his nose, almost strong enough to taste. He didn’t feel fear himself, not anymore, not since daggers in the dark. What else was there to be afraid of, when he knew there was nothing, no judgment, no pain, no seven hells, waiting on the other side? 

Instead the beast in him fed off fear now, and he felt a current of energy course through him, his body poised on alert and his muscles stiffening as he attuned to the sudden return of silence. A few people spilled forth from the hall, apparently alarmed by the commotion in the forest, even while most seemed oblivious, distracted by the ale and music and other kinds of pleasures. 

Jon didn’t wait for them to near, snatching Sansa’s hand and heading for the cover of the forest. He could feel Sansa’s heart fluttering beside him, her fingers trembling in his, heard each catch of her breath as they tripped over rocks and roots and branches. Once they were away from here, he would make sure she never felt that way again, that she never felt anything less than utterly in control of her own fate. 

Sansa gasped beside him, but he could smell the fresh, metallic tang of blood before he saw its source. Its slickness reflected in the moonlight, pools of silver against the dark ground, and stark against Ghost’s fur and the gleam of his red eyes. It looked far more menacing staining Littlefinger’s robes, though, where he laid sprawled, eyes open and unseeing. 

Once he had rued death, had hesitated to kill even his enemies, had cursed his lot in life as he fought free folk and his own brothers alike. Now a void where that hesitation and sense of honor existed long ago, and far from regret, he could feel little else but relief, not when he knew that those hands would never touch Sansa again, that his lips would never again grace hers. 

Something else glittered in the darkness, and gold eyes appeared beside Ghost. A wolf equal in size stepped from the shadows, and then the shade beneath the trees beyond them shifted, moonlight glinting on set after set of snarling white teeth, and the quiet of the night stirring with the rustle of fur that in the brightness of day Jon imaged would be tinged grey and red, black and white. 

“Lady,” Sansa breathed beside him, but this direwolf was far more feral than her sweet pup had ever been. He wondered if wherever Arya was, if she could see them together now, if she would return to their pack. 

Footsteps approached and Jon turned his back on the wolves and pulled Longclaw from its scabbard; he was not the one who had anything to fear. 

“It’s all right, Alyssa,” Sansa said. “They won’t hurt you.” 

The indistinct figures came closer, and Jon saw the girl most had mistaken for Sansa— _Alayne_ —emerged, her mask gone now, her hair askew and her pretty gold dress rumpled. It was a clever ruse, truly. She would have fooled most, but not him. Never him, and evidently not Petyr Baelish either.

Ser Harrold, however, seemed to be a different story. He glanced between them, eyes wide, and Jon did not need to rely on Ghost’s perceptions to sense his bewilderment. Jon had heard whispers about this Ser Harrold as he’d threaded his way through the crowds, whispers about when he might take on his lordship if poor Robert Arryn succumbed to his sicknesses, and whispers about when he’d marry Lord Baelish’s beautiful daughter. 

“He—he was watching.” The lady posing as Alayne seemed not to fear the wolves, but rather the corpse sprawled across the forest floor. “He—he tried to…” 

Sansa bent down and peeled free a golden mask from Littlefinger’s clenched fist. She seemed afraid no longer, her heartbeat even and her hand steady as she handed it to the other girl. 

“You should go back to the feast,” Sansa said. 

Lady Alyssa’s eyes flitted between Sansa and Jon, and something tightened in his chest with some kind of strange pride at her insinuation. “Will you come along?”

Sansa glanced back at him over her shoulder. “I…” 

“You’re leaving?” 

“Yes,” Sansa said simply. “I wish to go home.” 

He had no idea where Alayne called home, but it didn’t matter. Soon Alayne would disappear like mist as the sun rose, and Sansa would be back where she truly belonged. 

“Wait.” The other girl reached up to remove the gold mockingbird necklace resting against her throat. 

“Keep it,” Sansa said. “All of it.” 

She smiled in reply, and Jon thought she seemed trustworthy enough if Sansa held confidence in her. He turned on Ser Harrold. “What happened here?” 

“The wolf—that beast—”

Jon pulled Longclaw from his back, and this knight—this _boy_ —trembled as he looked from Ghost to the handle of Jon’s sword and back again. “What happened here?” he repeated. 

He imagined Ser Harrold might have all the valor in the world when it came to the jousting pitch at a tourney, but faced with true danger, fear crippled him like an errant arrow. “You…”

“No, not me. Not the wolf. A shadow cat,” Jon said, his voice deep, his words little more than a growl. 

“A shadow cat,” he repeated. 

“Are you certain you can remember?” It would be so easy to draw his blade across this boy’s throat, to buy an eternity of silence in case he might be tempted to spill the truth. They needed no whispers to reach the ears of Winterfell. The blood in his veins urged him to do it, his muscles itching with the fierce desire to defend. 

“Jon, no,” Sansa said. She reached up and wrapped her hand around his wrist. Her hand barely fit around his, and despite her long, thin fingers, she seemed to possess a strength that could temper even his most vicious impulse. 

He turned to look at her, and the fury dissipated as soon as it had arisen, her warmth beside him a tether keeping him from giving way to his base nature. 

“No,” she said again. “Leave him be.” 

“Go.” He lowered his sword. “Run. Before I change my mind.” 

Ser Harrold needed no further prompting, stumbling away into the underbrush, and Lady Alyssa glanced back one last time before following. 

Sansa knelt again and lifted the edge of Littlefinger’s cloak. At his hip laid a dagger—Valyrian steel, it looked like, the ripples in its blade shimmering like her dark hair in the silvery light of the moon, and as voices began to call out for anyone there in the woods, they slipped away into the shadows.


	7. Homecoming

The sky was in the midst of shifting from black to grey by the time they made it out of the forest. The Eyrie glinted in the moonlight high atop the Giant’s Lance, but the dense spruces and towering pines concealed the Gates of the Moon at the foot of the mountain. Sansa took solace in that; if they could not see even the flicker of the torches lining the walls or the glimmering moat, then it seemed ever unlikely that anyone searching would be able to spot shadows moving this far away in the darkness. 

Somewhere within the woods the last stragglers were probably now leaving the feast, stumbling to bed to sleep off their ale or drifting off to sleep after enjoying the company of another to warm their beds. After such a night of revelry, she imagined the castle would be still until the sun was high in the sky tomorrow, dead to the world until they were well away. 

Sansa, though, had never felt more alive. The air was already sharp with the bite of winter, and while it stung her lungs and reddened her cheeks, she felt no chill. The heat that had burned between her and Jon still warmed her, and the thrill of escape guarded her against the cold. 

They had found the horses left unattended, even the stableboys in attendance at the feast and probably well into their cups. Jon had chosen a striking black courser and Sansa a sweet grey mare who was quick and sure-footed, and she could have sworn she heard him laugh as they trotted away into the darkness and shifted into a canter once the ground flattened and smoothed.

He’d also torn away his mask, and without it, she could see the scar slashed across his eye. Soon the sun would begin to rise in the sky, bringing dawn and lighting the path ahead, and she expected more would be revealed as the world brightened, evidence of the battles he’d fought and won, proof that the Starks were not so easy to kill after all. 

One day maybe she would show him those that marred her own back, scratches from the flat of a sword and the cold metal of mailed fists, and she wondered if he would wish to touch them, to brush them away the way she had smoothed her finger over his. She wondered if he could breathe life back into Sansa the way the red witch had for him, and she wondered if his eyes would still darken with interest when she stripped the dye from her hair and it gleamed red again. 

She wondered if he would see her differently in the light of morning, if the heat in his eyes would disappear, if he would see her as a sister again or if he preferred Alayne when she could no longer be either. She wondered what he would think when her sins and desires were laid bare by day, when the memory of the kisses they shared and the way she’d writhed in his lap reflected on her flushed cheeks but were certainly not regretted. 

There would be word from the Vale, she was certain. She did not know what would become of it, if war would break out there as it had in so much of the rest of Westeros. She could not say if Sweetrobin and Harry would vie for the seat some believed rightfully belonged to each of them but neither particularly wanted, if they would play their own game of thrones. She would not be surprised if a new lady rose to take her place there, if Alyssa perhaps would be the one to fade away after all and not Alayne. 

She understood that temptation. Once it had been all she wanted, too. She’d thought then that power was an iron throne, a gilded crown, titles and castles, but she knew better now. And once she’d thought happiness meant a prince of gold to call her own, a life full of tourneys and mummers’ shows, a closet packed with pretty dresses and a chest of jewelry to wear to court and to feasts and to parade through the streets of the capital. 

Those were all mere veneers, though, for she had never felt happier or more powerful than she did at this moment, slipping through the woods with him at her side, the wolves at their heels, with nothing more than the clothes on her back and Littlefinger’s dagger resting cool and sharp against her hip, concealed beneath her skirts. Sansa would never again be that little bird in a cage, not now that she’d had a taste of freedom, not now that she had surrendered her inhibitions in Jon’s arms, not now that she had a name, a family, a place she fit without any cost, without sacrificing herself once more. 

They paused atop the crest of a hill dwarfed on all sides by the Mountains of the Moon, their ridges blanketed by snow, and looked down. The high road laid to their left, out of sight, leaving the woods to do the work of hiding them and the pack from anyone who might consider following at their tail. 

The slightest bit of light lit the sky as the sun began to creep over the horizon. Sansa knew the valley below would look dazzling by day, the trees a sea of gold and a riot of orange and red, the streams glittering with the thinnest layer of ice. Somewhere, beyond those plains and rocky passes and mountain peaks, off in the distance, the Riverlands, the Vale, and the North came together, intersected by the three forks of the Trident, and the kings road ran alongside them, stretching north. If they could get there— _when_ they did—she knew not even the swamps of the Neck or early autumn snows would stop them. 

Sansa reached up to unpin her hood, letting her hair flow free and removing her own mask. She thought no one would look twice at a blood-spattered silent sister who rode at the side of the Stranger, that all anyone would see would be the wife of death. No one would ask her to speak; it would all be part of the character. 

But she did not plan to be silent for long. 

Jon leaned over and took her hand as a narrow band of bright light appeared, shining along the edge of the sky, delineating it from crests and the canopy of trees below. She thought perhaps her desires had frightened him, but he showed no fear or revulsion, only a hunger of his own to return her advances in full. She supposed after death, all else seemed insignificant. 

“Sansa?” His voice, the way he said her name like a deep rumble, thick with the richness and sweetness of dark honey, affected her the same way it had back in the hall at the feast, when he saw her for who she truly was and as no one else could. It woke something within her she once thought she’d lost for good.

She gave him a smile. “Let’s go home.” 

He nodded, but he did not let go of her hand and collect his reins. Together they watched the morning dawn and the darkness die away. 

The path ahead now lit, they would ride for Winterfell. Winter was coming, and the wolves would rise again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! :)


End file.
